ABOUT 60
PERCENT of the world's pasture land (about 2.2 million km2),
just less than half the world's usable surface is covered by
grazing systems. Distributed between arid, semi arid and sub
humid, humid, temperate and tropical highlands zones, this
supports about 360 million cattle (half of which are in the humid
savannas), and over 600 million sheep and goats, mostly in the
arid rangelands. The distribution of livestock over the different
ecological zones is provided in Annex Table 2.

Grazing
systems supply about 9 percent of the world's production of beef
and about 30 percent of the world's production of sheep and goat
meat. For an estimated 100 million people in arid areas, and
probably a similar number in other zones, grazing livestock is
the only possible source of livelihood.

Grazing can
be visualized as beautiful cows in lush pastures in north-western
Europe or New Zealand-livestock in harmony with nature. Indeed,
livestock can improve soil and vegetation cover and plant and
animal biodiversity, as described in this chapter's case studies
of widely different conditions in Kenya, the western United
States and Guinea. By removing biomass, which otherwise might
provide the fuel for bush fires, by controlling shrub growth and
by dispersing seeds through their hoofs and manure, grazing
animals can improve plant species composition. In addition,
trampling can stimulate grass tillering, improve seed germination
and break-up hard soil crusts.

However,
many people associate grazing animals with overgrazing, soil
degradation and deforestation. To them livestock keeping in arid
regions of the tropics provokes images of clouds of dust,
bleached cow skeletons and an advancing desert. The two most
quoted sources are the Global Assessment of Soil Degradation
(Oldeman et al., 1991), which estimates that 680 million
hectares of rangeland have become degraded since 1945, and Dregne
et al., (1991) who argue that 73 percent of the world's
4.5 billion hectares of rangeland is moderately or severely
degraded. In humid areas, livestock are associated with ranch
encroachment and deforestation of tropical rainforests and
competition with wildlife.

Prolonged
heavy grazing undoubtedly contributes to the disappearance of
palatable species and the subsequent dominance by other, less
palatable, herbaceous plants or bushes. Such loss of plant and,
in consequence, animal biodiversity can require a long
regenerative cycle (30 years in savannas, 100 years in
rainforests). Excessive livestock grazing also causes soil
compaction and erosion, decreased soil fertility and water
infiltration, and a loss in organic matter content and water
storage capacity. On the other hand, total absence of grazing
also reduces biodiversity because a thick canopy of shrubs and
trees develops which intercepts light and moisture and results in
overprotected plant communities which are susceptible to natural
disasters.

The
environmental challenge is thus to identify the policies,
institutions and technologies which will enhance the positive and
mitigate the negative effects of grazing. Environmental
challenges, issues and options differ significantly according to
climate and land capabilities. Livestock-environment interactions
are therefore described separately for the arid, semi-arid and
sub-humid, humid rainforest, and temperate and tropical highlands
grazing systems respectively. As will be seen, that
differentiation is particularly important for the arid
eco-systems. As aridity increases, so does variability of
rainfall, to the extent that the periodicity of rain becomes the
single most important factor affecting the state of the natural
resource base. Classical concepts of vegetation succession and
climax vegetation do not apply in such environments and new
concepts are required. These are detailed below.

Land. Probably
more than any other system, at least until recently, arid
rangelands1 have been associated with land
degradation. The concept of "desertification"
originated from the sight of degrading fringes of arid rangelands
and advancing deserts. In addition, arid grazing systems and
nomadic pastoralism have been associated with inefficient and
backward production.

1 Arid
rangelands refers to land with mostly native and annual
vegetation, with an average growing season of less than 75
days.

The type of
variation presented in this graph highlights the difficulty
in obtaining an accurate assessment of land degradation in
arid areas.

Box 2.1 The resilience of the
arid lands.

THE
GRAPH how the Sahara expands and contracts over time (and
conversely the Sahelian rangelands contract and expand)
as measured infrared reflection of the vegetation. it
shows the effect of the dry year of 1984 (rainfall
deficit of 55%) and the recovery in 1988 (rainfall
deficit of 19%)

Over the
last decade these views have changed radically. First, there is
now significant evidence that in the arid zones the extent of
land degradation is greatly exaggerated. Part of the doom view of
continuing degradation is caused by problems of definition and
time frame. Definitions were based on parameters, which could not
easily be measured ("diminution or destruction of biological
material, which can lead to desert-like conditions" (UN
1977), or mixed process and end state ("the expression of
natural, economic and social processes, which destroy the
equilibrium of soil, vegetation, air and water" (FAO/UNEP,
1984)). Even more importantly, most assessments covered only a
short period, and did not include the concept of reversibility,
which seems critical from a development and long term
sustainability perspective (Nelson, 1990). If desertification is
defined as an irreversible process of land degradation, there is
less "desertification" than previously claimed. Two
recent findings support this view:

 Long term
monitoring of the infra-red reflection index (measuring the
amount of green biomass) by NASA in West Africa (Tucker et
al., 1991), clearly shows the "contracting and
expanding Sahara", rather than a continuously expanding
desert (see Box 2.1). More recent observations confirm
this earlier finding. In effect, the northern vegetation
limit of the Sahel is now approximately where it was in 1970
(Tucker, personal communication);


An analysis, carried out under this study, shows an overall
increase in productivity of Sahelian land and livestock (Box
2.2) albeit with considerable year to year variations.
While this increase in productivity is undoubtedly the result
of several factors, it certainly does not point to the
continuing downward spiral in pasture production, and hence
productivity, which has traditionally been assumed.

Photo series of a
vegetation of Mali in consecutive years at the same time each
year Courtesy ILCA.

Secondly,
there is convincing evidence that traditional transhumance
production systems on arid rangelands are highly efficient.
Studies show that production of protein per hectare of
traditional nomadic pastoralists in Mali and Botswana is two- or
three-fold higher (and at much lower cost in non-renewable fuel
resources) than production from sedentary production systems or
ranching under similar climatic conditions in Australia and the
USA respectively (Breman and de Wit, 1983, de Ridder and
Wagenaar, 1984). In addition, arid grazing systems are often
multiple-use systems, with wildlife and other plant products
being important additional products.

AN
ANALYSIS of livestock production in five Sahelian
countries over a thirty year period, carried out as part
of this study, shows a 93 percent increase in the meat
produced per ha, and 47 percent increase in the meat
produced per head. At the same time, there was a 22
percent increase in the animal population (from 14.5 to
17.6 million TLU2) over the same period.

2
Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Sudan

This
productivity increase occurs in both cattle and small
ruminants. Part of the increased productivity may be the
result of a progressive shift of the livestock population
to the higher potential areas in more humid zones, and
the increased use of crop residues. However, apart from
the sharp inter-annual variation, the long term trend
points to sustained productivity, and to an obviously
stable resource base.

Source:
Analysis carried out under this study, based on FAO
production data.

The
greatest degradation of land and vegetation is around settlements
and water points. These areas are usually within a radius of
about 1-5 km of the waterpoint and often look quite spectacular.
However, assuming an average distance of 10 to 30 km between
waterpoints, degraded areas would, even in the worst cases,
amount to no more than 10 percent of the total area.

Biodiversity.
Arid rangelands contain a broad variety of plant species for wild
and domestic herbivores. For example, Le Houerou (1989) estimates
that, in Africa, there are perhaps as many as 3,500 plant species
upon which the continent's herbivores feed, compared with less
than 150 species on which humans depend. There is no widespread
risk of an immediate irreversible loss of plant biodiversity.
Mixed grazing systems (cattle, small ruminants, camels and
wildlife) help to maintain wide plant diversity and, because the
vegetation is extremely resilient, any changes in the vegetation
are likely to be the result of an unusually dry period and,
therefore, temporary.

Underlying
pressures. The way most dryland ecosystems are traditionally
used explains, to a large extent, their resilience. Arid
rangelands have traditionally been used under a communal property
regime by nomadic producers who move their stock in search of
pasture according to season. From the wet season grazing they
will move their animals to higher-potential river valleys,
cropland or mountain meadows (the "key resources") for
the dry season. With highly variable rainfall (both in time and
space), pastoral economies are typically of the "bust and
boom" type: a "boom" when rainfall is plentiful
and herds and flocks grow, and a "bust" when drought
(or late winter storms in Central Asia) occurs and animals die.
Thus, abiotic factors such as rainfall, rather than livestock
density, determine long term primary production and vegetation
cover (Mearns, 1996).

This
continuous dis-equilibrium conserves soil and vegetation,
especially annual vegetation in more arid areas, because grazing
pressure has to adjust to the quantity of feed available. The
theoretical bases for range management under those conditions
("opportunistic range management") have recently been
well described by Behnke, Scoones and Kerven (1993) and Scoones
(1994).

A
substantial body of evidence from the last decade (Thomas and
Middleton, 1994), shows that arid regions contain dynamic and
highly resilient ecosystems, with a strong capacity to regenerate
rapidly when the rains return. Similarly, traditional pastoral
systems have conserved biodiversity because pastoralists have a
direct interest in preserving a wide variety of plants and
animals. Gathering range products, such as medicinal plants, gums
and resins, is an important part of the pastoral way of life.

The
fundamental driving force on natural resources is population
pressure, especially that applied from outside the arid
rangelands and their traditional inhabitants. While population
growth of pastoral peoples has been slow (Pratt et al., in
press), growth of non-pastoral groups in the arid and semi-arid
regions have been among the highest in the world. This strong
growth of other groups results in an increasing encroachment by
arable farmers on to the pastoralists' "key resource"
sites. Flood plains which have been traditionally used for wet
season grazing, such as the Interior Delta of the Niger and the
Senegal Valley in West Africa, and also smaller sites of high
potential, are being converted into cropland. Furthermore,
flexibility of animal movement is progressively hampered by
increased population pressure and loss of corridors between wet
and dry season grazing areas. Stock is increasingly concentrated
the entire year on the same lands, breaking the ecologically
sound cycle of alternating use of wet and dry season grazing
areas, leading to over-use of dry season grazing land and,
inevitably, to human suffering. Such increased pressure often
results in war, as shown by the recent confrontation between
Senegal and Mauritania and the many armed conflicts in East
Africa.

Increased
population pressure also leads to greater water development and
permanent human settlement in arid rangelands. Although the
direct effect of waterpoints on land degradation is relatively
limited, the development of water supplies for more intensive use
can upset an entire eco-system. It may lead to de facto
privatization of land around the water point (IFAD, 1995) and
change the relationship between traditional wet and dry season
grazing areas, changing traditional dry season grazing into year
around grazing.

But not all
forces are exogenous to the pastoral system. In the Borana region
of southern Ethiopia, because of indigenous population growth,
the number of milk producing cattle per head of the pastoral
population is falling. In consequence, the pastoralists face
increasing poverty, decreasing food energy levels and greater
risk from the effects of drought (Coppock 1996). Furthermore, the
larger number of people in the region means that fuelwood is
being cut at an ever greater rate. The inevitable result of all
these pressures is land degradation. Drought often exacerbates
such situations and, indeed, the ability to recover after drought
is one of the main indicators of long term environmental and
social sustainability of arid grazing systems.

Policy
pressures. Several human activities exacerbate the
fundamental driving force of increasing population pressure. They
are:

"Stabilization"
of the system. Often well-intentioned policies sought
and still seek to stabilize the "boom and bust"
cycles which exist between man, animals and vegetation in
arid rangelands. Examples of these are:

 Attempts
to regulate the stocking rate. This was the main
focus of many rangeland development projects in the
seventies and early eighties. Development projects
promoted individual ranch development, or the allocation
of grazing areas to groups, under strict maximum stocking
rate obligations. Such attempts failed completely because
of the irrelevance of any carrying capacity estimate
under variable conditions and because of the difficulty
of enforcement (Box 2.3). In addition, these
attempts reduced the essential mobility and flexibility
of the system, and concentrated stock on limited grazing
areas, which may have received little rain.


Feed subsidies for drought relief. Under the
argument that it would be necessary to protect national
livestock assets, North African and Middle Eastern
governments, in particular, have had a policy of
subsidizing feed grains as emergency assistance in times
of drought. Besides the questionable social effect
(subsidized feed tends to benefit wealthier herders only)
and the doubtful overall economic benefit, subsidized
feed also has a harmful effect on the rangelands. The
tendency is for too many animals to be retained on the
rangeland, thereby preventing normal regeneration of the
vegetation after drought.

Changes
in access to land. Traditionally, Muslim land
tenure rules favour crop farmers over pastoral herders in
access to land because "laying of the hand" (e.g.
evidence of use) confers exclusive ownership. This was
exacerbated by nationalization of arid rangelands which was
introduced by many governments in the postcolonial period in
Africa and Asia (IFAD, 1995) and undermined still further the
intricate fabric of customary practice. An ecologically
well-balanced system of communal land use degenerated into a
"free for all" open access system in much of
sub-Saharan Africa and India or was replaced by individual
farms, such as in Algeria, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Individual
farms were too small to permit an efficient use of the
erratic rainfall patterns inherent in these areas. In
communal areas, the traditional collective internal
discipline in the management of the resources disappeared and
overgrazing and land degradation followed. Jodha (1992)
demonstrated this most convincingly in India (see Box 2.4).
The same mistakes are now occurring in the Middle East and
are likely in Central Asia. Under the slogan
"privatization is desirable", state farms are
privatized, the more productive land (and especially the key
resources) falls into the hands of the most powerful
individuals and sound management of the entire resource base
is put in jeopardy.

Box 2.3 Experiences with
stocking rate controls.

TO
DEVELOP new rnanagement practices for arid rangelands,
GTZ sponsored from 1981-1993 a controlled grazing
experiment in Senegal, seeking to balance available
pasture and stocking rates within a fixed territory in
six 200 hectare plots, privatized for the purpose of the
experiment. The system was monitored for 12 years for its
environmental and socio-economic impact and herd
performance, and results were compared with those from
herds outside the scheme.

Several
problems emerged. First, the constant stocking density
proved to be incompatible with the wide variations in
rainfall and therefore available forage. In bad years,
stocking densities were too high and herds had to be
moved out to survive. Available forage was insufficient
in three years but under-utilized in four years out of
the 12. Only in two years did stocking density actually
match carrying capacity. Second, the impact on vegetation
was more negative than positive, owing to
under-utilization, a decline in quality of pasture, and a
thinning out of drought-resistant fodder species. Third,
while animal production was good in the best years,
animal vulnerability increased in bad years.

Comparisons
with pastoral management practices within and outside the
scheme revealed the superiority of the latter. The
controlled grazing experiment revealed the inherent
limitations of the concept of carrying capacity in an
environment not at equilibrium; the difficulties of
applying a closed model of water and grazing management
on a large scale; the reduction in animal mobility and
flexibility which resulted; and the removal of the
positive symbiotic interaction of animals and plan.
communities. GTZ concluded that efforts to support
pastoralists' self-reliance would have to depend much
more on the creation of a favorable institutional
environment, including securing pastoral land rights, and
access to fall-back areas.

Source:
Mearns, 1996, from; Thébaud, Grell and Miehe, 1955.

Box 2.4 Deterioration of the
common property resources (CPR) in India.

IN
A STUDY of 75 villages in seven rather arid states of
India, Jodha (1992) found that the CPR area had declined
by as much as 30 to 50 percent between the 1950s and
1982, and there had been a reduction of cattle by 20
percent in favour of small ruminants. The traditional
communal management of the CPR had basically broken down:

 While
in 1950 seventy villages had formal or informal rules
for the management of the CPR, in 1982 only eight
villages maintained those rules.


While in 1950 fifty-five villages levied formal or
informal taxes to maintain the CPR, none did so in
1982.


While in 1950 sixty-five villages had formal or
informal obligations to maintain their CPR, in 1982
there were only thirteen.

Thus
traditional CPR management shifted to open access,
causing a significant degradation of the CPRs as shown by
the decrease, by about 75 percent, of the number of trees
in the CPR, and the decline in the number of grazing
days.

Source: Jodha,
1992.

Inappropriate
incentives. Under a nationalistic strategy of food
production self-sufficiency, many governments (especially in
North Africa and West Asia), have subsidized tractors and fuel
and supported high producer prices for domestic cereal
production, further encouraging the encroachment of crops in the
"key resource" sites of the arid zones. Many of these
areas are marginal for crop cultivation and would not have been
cultivated without the subsidies. However, as noted before, these
key resource areas constitute the "safety net" for
rangeland livestock production and are the key to environmentally
sound arid land management. Cheap fuel and trucks have also led
to "motorized nomadism" which has allowed the wealthier
herders to move their animals rapidly to wherever pasture was
available. This has also interfered with the normal regeneration
process of the emerging vegetation. Finally, high meat import
tariffs also contributed to over stocking.

The
over-riding need is to stop the building-up of further human
pressure in arid zones. As discussed, arid rangelands are already
efficiently used and no significant increases in productivity can
be envisaged. Since populations in these areas experience a
downward spiral of declining livestock/people ratios and
increased vulnerability to drought, employment generation outside
the dry rangelands is therefore the most critical component of
developing sustainable rangeland resource use in the arid zones.

As the
second priority, although still of crucial importance, external
interventions in the system need to take account of the
non-equilibrium status of pastoral systems in arid zones and
enhance rather than restrict flexibility and mobility. This means
that attempts to regulate stocking rate should be stopped. First,
the carrying capacity of rangelands in these non-equilibrium
environments cannot be estimated with any acceptable degree of
reliability. Second, such estimates can even be dangerous, as
they may lead to the wrong intervention in an attempt to control
stocking rates (see Box 2.3). Third, even apart from the
technical flaws in the estimation of the carrying capacity,
experience has shown that it is almost always impossible to
enforce stocking rates.

The third
priority should be the strengthening of traditional pastoral
institutions and resource management practices. "Getting the
institutions right", by empowering pastoral people, is now
generally considered the main challenge in pastoral and arid land
development. Furthermore there has been a growing acknowledgment
of the multiple uses that arid rangelands provide to a wide
variety of users (IFAD, 1995, de Haan, 1996).

Specific
actions to support these strategy elements are to develop
effective co-management regimes, forging partnerships between the
State and a wide variety of users, with the State carrying the
overall responsibility for arbitrating conflicting interests at
national level, and facilitating negotiation. Practical
management decisions and negotiations between competing users
should, however, be delegated to the local level (Mearns, 1996).
The delegation of powers would aim to strengthen:

 the
application of the "subsidiarity" principle (Swift,
1995), within the local administrative capability which
requires devolution to local groups of those public
administrative powers that undermine or duplicate traditional
governance structures. The creation of pastoral associations
has already been an important focus of arid land institution
building, although results have been mixed (Box 2.5);


customary resource user rights. The need for flexibility and
mobility would require the boundaries to be "fuzzy"
(Behnke and Kerven, 1994), although with more clearly defined
territorial boundaries for the "key resources";

Box 2.5 Pastoral organizations
and arid land management; lessons from the past.

THE
DEVELOPMENT of grassroots, regional national herder
organizations has been a major thrust of most donors in
West and North Africa over the last decade. While there
has been considerable progress in establishing viable
organizations for the provision of services such as
animal health and education, these organizations have,
with some exceptions, such as the World Bank funded
Middle Atlas programme in Morocco, been less successful
in range management (Shanmugaratnam et al., 1992).
They failed to fully facilitate the participatory
process, as they were embedded in authoritarian cultures
of government, project administrations and the social
structure of the groups themselves (Vedeld in de Haan,
1994). Key lessons which emerge from these experiences
are the need to (i) focus attention on procedural law and
conflict resolution rather than on specifying rigid
tenure rights (ii) assume a gradual transfer of
responsibilities to pastoral groups, starting with
services, and progressively moving towards more
sophisticated responsibilities, such as range management;
and (iii) tailor the size of the group to the goals
envisaged. Range management tasks might, for example,
need a different group size than veterinary services.

The fourth
priority is the identification of effective drought management
policies. Irreversible land degradation in arid zones, if it
occurs, originates as a result of high stocking rates during
droughts. The appropriate drought strategy is to de-stock as
early and rapidly as possible, rather than seeking to maintain
maximum stock numbers. Policies and subsequent investments which
support such rapid de-stocking are the development of savings and
credit schemes, and infrastructure investments in roads, markets,
slaughterhouses and cold storage (Pratt et al., in press).
However, little experience has been gained of the application of
these concepts in dis-equilibrium systems. The only notable
exception is Australia.

Incentive
policies also play an important role in arriving at sustainable
rangeland use. Key elements of appropriate incentive policy would
be:

 Increasing
the costs of grazing in order to reduce animal pressure would
promote earlier off-take. The perception of pastoral people
keeping livestock for wealth and social status has been
abandoned and there is now a general acceptance that
pastoralists' behaviour is, as may be expected, economically
rational. This economic rationale should induce herders to
forsake liveweight gains of their almost mature and only
slowly growing animals, and sell them earlier, because the
cost of the grazing would outweigh the benefits of the final
liveweight gain. But cost recovery has to be combined with a
decentralized management of the proceeds by the
beneficiaries, to provide appropriate feedback mechanisms to
producers and could cover:


Levying grazing fees for communal areas. Such fees have been
proposed often but little experience exists of them in
practice. A system of progressive fees, with larger herds
paying more per head (Narjisse, 1996), is attractive,
particularly for many of the dry areas in Africa where
livestock are increasingly concentrated in the hands of
outside owners, such as civil servants, traders and crop
farmers;


Full cost recovery especially for water supply and animal
health services. In many cases, water has been a free
resource supplied by the public sector (and frequently
financed by the international donor community). Full cost
recovery, including construction costs, should most likely
reduce the number of large boreholes and, therefore, reduce
local degradation around these water points;


Removal of price distortions for other agricultural inputs,
in order to reduce the conversion of pastoral key resources
into marginal crop land.

Most donor
agencies now accept these as basic elements of their pastoral
strategy as shown, for example, by the excellent recent review by
IFAD (1995) of common property resources. In addition, African
and Middle Eastern government authorities are increasingly
adopting participatory and decentralized approaches, with a
greater degree of cost recovery, although considerable
apprehension still persists in allowing pastoral groups any great
degree of independence.

Research
needs. The key areas where future research is urgently needed
emerge from the above recommendations. With limited opportunities
for increasing production, the emphasis must be on conservation.
This implies:

 the
identification of appropriate indicators to provide reliable
information on resource trends in arid areas;


the development of appropriate methodologies for economic
appraisal of investment in the conversion of pastoralists'
"key resources". These appraisals normally compare
only the pasture yield during the dry season or summer
grazing, with the cereal yields and, in most cases, the
economic benefits from the increased cereal yields outweigh
the pastoral use. If the impact of crop encroachment on the
entire eco-system is calculated, the use of such high
potential areas for livestock is economically more efficient,
and certainly environmentally more efficient, than conversion
into cropland;


continued research on pastoral institutions;


the design of sustainable drought preparedness plans, with
particular emphasis on decentralized management and the
design of appropriate banking and insurance schemes; and

Although
these two zones are combined in this discussion because of their
similar physical livestock-environment interactions, many of
their agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions are
different. The semiarid zones are generally densely populated.
Typical areas include parts of the Sahel, the rainfed
crop-livestock areas of North Africa, some of the rangelands of
Central Asia and the drier areas of the Indian subcontinent. The
sub-humid zone savannas have, until recently, been rather
sparsely populated because access was impeded by human diseases
(such as river blindness, African sleeping sickness) and
tick-borne diseases in animals. Typical areas include the
savannas of West Africa, eastern Colombia and the Cerrados of
Brazil, southern and eastern Africa and eastern areas of the
Indian subcontinent. These areas are now becoming the main
frontier for agricultural development and worldwide it is where
ruminant livestock numbers still grow, as they accommodate, in
sub-Saharan Africa an overflow of animals from the drier areas,
and, in South America, animals from the Andean Highlands.
Livestock interaction involves most components of the environment
e.g. land, water and biodiversity.